Back in the saddle

A few hours ago, I was wandering around my studio trying to work out exactly what the hell I needed to pack for rehearsal.

Fourteen months. Wow. It seemed like a aeon ago that we’d stepped foot into the rehearsal rooms, working on songs for upcoming shows. And it was very weird thinking about what I needed to pack rather than it all being second-nature and doing it on auto-pilot, like it usually was whenever we went out on tour or rehearsed.

Andy came to grab me on the way to the rehearsal room and it dawned on me that I didn’t even have a new battery for my wireless pack (I don’t use cables, even in the rehearsal room since I’m possibly the most uncoordinated idiot in the world and trip over them every five minutes). The only battery I had was over a year old from our last date of the Tyrants Return tour in 2010. Hmmm… this could be interesting.

There was an odd sense of Deja Vu pulling into the rehearsal studio, and lugging in. Arnie, the guy who runs the place was still in his booth, as enthusiastic as ever to see us, directing us to our room where Mark and Damo had already set up and were going through a new cover we’re planning to put into the live set.

A quick sound check later and we were away. We figured we’d get into it all gradually and start with some stuff we were really familiar with, so we tore through Footsteps In The Sand and Through The Fire. All pretty much spot on, all with three-part harmonies that were in tune… we played well, I sung well… WHAT IS THIS SORCERY?! This was supposed to be a trainwreck…!

We did five or six more songs before we called it a night. Sore fingers, sore throats, and we needed to make plans to get some new additions to the set happening for each member before we attempted to play them as a band.

Apart from soreness, it honestly felt like fourteen days, not fourteen months that we’d played together. We’ve actually played sloppier shows than this rehearsal. Absolutely astounding – not one of us expected it to go so well. Even the battery I had in my wireless worked and lasted the entire night. Wow.

So now, the fun starts for me. I’ll be programming up click tracks for Damo to play to with backing keyboards/choirs/orchestras/additional guitar parts (for the songs where we have a billion layers of guitars in parts), and making some instructional videos for the guys on how to play their parts.

What are the new songs? Well, some are VERY new. Some are VERY old and no one has heard them since the mid-2000s. New covers. And that’s all I’m gonna tell you! 😉

But I’ll leave you with this: the headspace we’re in is better than it’s been in a long time, and just going by this first rehearsal, by the time we get out live we’re gonna be a dangerous machine. This is gonna be good…. 🙂